Saturday, February 15, 2014

Taking it to the streets.

I had an epiphany a few days ago when I read a post on the Grady Doc's blog about how she ultimately had to deal with a bully on her job. And it was neither pretty nor nice, but ENTIRELY necessary. The epiphany I had was that my approach to dealing with bullies on the job has been VERY wrong. I realized that I should deal with them on the job the exact same way I did when I was in elementary school. And that's by standing up to them.

Anyhoo, this was yet another tough week in on the job for me and while my asthma improved over the week, it all went to hell when the noob that runs the lab I work in, decided to open a large container of industrial strength bleach DIRECTLY behind me, not in the hood as is required. And in a room about 25 feet in area, that was just plain STUPID especially with an asthmatic in the room!! Needless to say, I proceeded to have another asthma attack on the job and left the lab just as the folks from Environmental Health were walking in to conclude their investigation about the air quality in the lab that triggered my asthma last week..... Anyone have any idea where this is ended up going? The short version is that I ended up making it CLEAR to my "cool" Supv that I wasn't taking ANY more shit from her because there's an idiot running the lab that's blithely unaware of lab safety.

Moving on, I'm again having some doubts about my desire to become a Pathologist after reading about some of the health issues associated with sitting for extended periods of time. I also think that my personality is well suited for working with patients, and that my original goal of working in a clinic that serves the undeserved would be a good personal fit too. Still, I know these conversations are VERY premature but after this last, idiotic chemical exposure, I'm rethinking how much more I want to work with/around some of the nastiest chemicals known to man.

The other thought that's been running through my head a lot is that my work in general at a major cancer center, while noble, is starting to get hard to deal with on a day to day basis. And by that I mean that I think it may be time for me to do research in some other area simply because the despair I see from day to day is stressful. It could be that my job environment is stressful and that exacerbates the overall work environment, I'm not sure. What I am feeling is that my work in cancer in general may be coming to an end.

And those feelings are timed VERY well with my next position in cardiovascular disease research, which is set to start in March 2014.